[EM] A practical matter for Ranked-Pairs, among other methods

[Eric Gorr]

(I'll return to the odd RP case I just presented soon)

Several methods for determining the winner are based on algorithms which for a large enough N (where N is the number of options to be ranked) could take longer to compute then the amount of time the Universe has been in existence...that N is probably not very much different then the N that would take an average human lifetime to complete.

For example, the computation on which Ranked-Pairs or Beatpath Winner is based, in large part, on Floyd's Algorithm, which runs in O(N^3) time.

I was just wondering if anyone had researched this very real problem of just how large N could become before it became impractical to use for a particular election.


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